It was good to be lost with a friend.
Ginger’s phone chimes, reminding me that she isn’t lost anymore.
She picks it up and grins, which meansJosh,and starts texting him back. I eat my avocado toast.
My phone vibrates. I take it out of my bag, then groan. Penny has finally cracked how to get me to reply to her:
“Agatha! We’re coming to see you! On holiday!”
“What?”I text back. “When?”And then—I should have said this first—“NO.”
“In two weeks!”Penny sends. “YES.”
“Penelope, no. I won’t be home.”It’s true. Ginger and I are going to the Burning Lad Festival.
“You’re lying,”Penny replies.
“Ahhhh!” Ginger is saying. It turns into “Ahhhh-gatha!”
I look up. Ginger is shaking her phone at me like it’s a lottery ticket.
“What?”
“Josh got us into that NowNext retreat!”
“Ginger, nooo.…”
“He said he’d cover our room and everything.” Josh is 32. He invented something that lets you use your phone as a thermometer. Or he was on a team that invented it. Anyway. He’s always covering something. The room, the check, the concert. Ginger never gets over it.
“Ginger, we’re going to Burning Lad that week!”
“We can go to Burning Lad next year; the desert will still be there.”
“And Josh won’t?”
She frowns at me. “You know how exclusive this retreat is.”
I stir my tea. “Not really.…”
“Only vested members get to bring guests. And usually only one guest. I begged Josh to get you in, too.”
“Ginger…”
“Agatha—” She pauses to bite her bottom lip and squish up her nose, like she’s about to tell me something big. “—I think I’m going to level up. At the retreat. And I really want you to be there.”
Crowley, of course.Level up.Josh and his friends are obsessed with “levelling up” and “maximizing potential.” If you suggest brunch, they’ll be like, “Let’s change the world instead!”
“Let’s climb a mountain!” “Let’s get VIP seats for the U2 concert!”
NowNext is their social club. It’s like Weight Watchers for rich men. They go to meetings and take turns saying how “activated” they are. I’ve gone to a few meetings with Ginger; they were mostly a bore. (Though there are always first-rate nibbles.) At the end of every meeting, the vested members go into a locked room and do their secret handshake or whatever.
Ginger can’t believe her luck with Josh. He’s successful, he’s ambitious, he’s fit.
(“My last boyfriend was a barista, Agatha!”
“You are also a barista, Ginger. That’s how you met.”)
She doesn’t know what Josh sees in her. I’m a little worried that he doesn’t see anythinginher. That all he sees is what there is to see. That she’s young, that she’s beautiful. That she looks good on his arm.
